DigiView: The Future of Libraries

DigiView

Our challenge was to increase the visibility of The State Library of Victoria’s digital collections and enable library users - whether onsite or offsite - to explore, discover and use them.

Timeline - 24 hour Hackathon - 2018

Role: UX/UI Designer, HCI Researcher and Videographer

Tools: Sketch, Framer, Photoshop, Premiere Pro

Team: Jodie Clothier / Perrin Jones / Elektra Jiang

OzCHI 24 Hour Design Challenge Winner

OzCHI24, is an annual international student design competition run as part of the OzCHI conference. At the beginning of the hackathon, participants will receive a design brief which they have 24 hours to solve. Due to time constraints, primary data or user research gathered from external participants is not allowed. At the end of the 24 hours, teams submit a 2–3 minute video showcasing their design, and a draft paper explaining their design process and concept. In the end, we were named as winners and were flown out to Melbourne to present our research at the OzCHI 2018 conference, the largest gathering of HCI researchers in the southern hemisphere.

DISCOVER

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

“Only 5% of State Library of Victoria’s physical collection is on open shelves. An important challenge for SLV is to make digital items more visible for discovery and learning.”

— OzCHI Design Challenge

IDENTIFIED CHALLENGES

BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Public Libraries Past & Present / Bonding Community

The digital library as place that libraries are less likely to function as physical storages but places that enable people to socialise, collaborate and co-create (Pomerantz et al., 2007).

Current Challenges / Serendipity

Serendipity takes place when people are “always making discoveries, by accidents; sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of” (Remer,T.G., 1965). Translating this experience to a digital product is a challenge with limited screen size and dimensionality.

Current Solutions / Adjacency

The Bohemian Bookshelfis considered as a good interactive information visualization since it categorises the materials by book color, timeline, pile, and author name in order to create ‘adjacency’.

Design Precedents / Interactivity

The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum interactive pen uses digital devices to bridge the gap between the physical resources and the viewers. It allows users to store the information of exhibits or art pieces into the pen by simply sensing the chips built underneath the artwork.

DESIGN

METHODS OVERVIEW

DIVERGING METHODS

After immersing ourselves in the prompt and literature, we decided to run wild brainstorming sessions to get ideas flowing. We also did online research on user personas at libraries and journey mapped some of their experiences to help inspire new opportunities for innovative solutions. Since there was a restraint on interviewing outside users, we had to use our background research and personal experiences to build our foundation. Once we felt comfortable with who our users were and what their experiences were, we went back into wild brainstorming sessions until we ideated an idea we felt fit the need of users and addressed pain points in our journey maps.

CONVERGING METHODS

With all our ideas on the white boards, we evaluated and reframed our ideas through the limitations of the project and current technology. We used a decision matrix with the identified criteria in the prompt to choose our best idea and progress into the design and deliver phases of DigiView. Through storyboarding and a low fidelity prototype we could narrow down and define what we wanted the experience and interface design would look like. Before going into high fidelity designs, we mock tested our solution by roleplaying our personas developed earlier; the results helped us identify some problems earlier and iterate in low fidelity further.

DELIVER

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

DigiView serves as the bridge between the physical and digital sphere for libraries with the implementation of interactive touch screens to improve accessibility of digital content through the physical touchpoint of bookshelves. They allow library users to browse physical and digital collections, search for content and checkout digital and physical material at the bookshelf itself with its companion application. The intent is to positively augment the physical library experience rather than replace it by maintaining the importance of libraries as a public space, encouraging serendipity through physical exploration and preserving traditional browsing habits via the adjacency of digital and physical content.

FUNCTIONALITY - INTERACTIVE SCREEN

FUNCTIONALITY - MOBILE APP

Mockups & Visualisations

VIDEO PROTOTYPE (CREATED WITHIN THE 24 HR CHALLENGE AS WELL)

FUTURE WORK

Censorship

Adult & sensitive materials will need to be censored on the screen, how can we use the companion app to verify and allow access to these materials?

Technology

Some libraries can’t afford screens of this dimension, how can we make this technology modular and adaptable?

Access

Some users may not have mobile devices for checking out digital content, how can we make this solution successful for libraries of every size?

Piracy

With any new browsing technology comes the potential for stealing & piracy. How can we ensure digital content isn’t stolen?